Computer virus shuts down Houston municipal courts

Published 6:30 am, Friday, February 6, 2009

Houston shut down part of its municipal court operations Friday, cancelling hearings and suspending arrests for minor offenses after a computer virus infected hundreds of its machines. City officials said they expected the problems to extend at least through Monday.

Court offices will remain open to allow people to pay tickets and fines, but the dockets will have to be reset, a move that will affect thousands of cases, city officials said.

It was unclear Friday how the virus got into the system, but officials promised a thorough investigation. They could not say when they hoped to have the virus removed from the city network.

The disruption cascaded through city departments, leading police to temporarily abandon making some arrests for minor offenses. Officials also briefly disconnected the Houston Emergency Center. Although some emergency communications, such as dispatching, are routed through the center, police experienced no major disruptions, officials said.

By Friday afternoon, officials said the virus appeared to be contained to 475 of the city’s more than 16,000 computers. But the problems it caused grew so severe that city officials made an emergency purchase order for up to $25,000 to bring in Gray Hat Research, a technology security company that began trying to eradicate it through the early morning hours Friday.

“We’re working as hard as we can on it,” said Richard Lewis, the city’s information technology director. “This is a complex matter. We’re not sure what virus has attacked us. It’s going to probably be days.”

The compromise of the city networks dealt another blow to the municipal court computer system, which has been beset by problems almost as soon as it went live in April 2006.

The $10 million effort by Maximus Inc. to bring the court’s activities online was immediately troublesome to judges, clerks and prosecutors and delayed court proceedings in 2006. After threatening litigation, the city reached a $5 million settlement with Maximus and may seek another vendor.

Janis Benton, the city’s deputy director of information technology, said officials suspected the infection was a form of Conficker, the latest super virus that has breached at least 10 million computers worldwide as of late January, including the government health department in New Zealand and defense systems in France.

Conficker, also known as Downadup, infects computers via a flaw in the Microsoft Windows operating system. Microsoft issued an emergency patch back in October, and PCs that have the patch are protected from the worm.

Once on a computer, Conficker disables some of its capabilities, connects to outside servers and can download other malicious programs. It may also gather personal information and upload it to remote servers.

Because individuals and larger operations are often slow to patch their systems, Conficker has spread quickly.

Lewis said the patch almost certainly would have been installed because of protocols in place, but said he is not sure the problem is Conficker.

Hold on minor arrests

Lewis said city officials began to notice some of the effects of the virus on Wednesday and began a full-fledged effort to quarantine it on Thursday. It had the effect of severely slowing down the operations of computers, he said.

The Houston Emergency Center disconnected from the city network at 11 a.m. Friday and reconnected around 4:30 p.m., officials said. The only impact on emergency operations was that some dispatching had to be communicated by radio rather than broadcast to computer screens inside police cars. Officers had no trouble making routine license or criminal records checks in their vehicles, police and city officials said.

However, police this weekend will be using only citations for class C misdemeanors instead of arrests, since they cannot be processed. Exceptions will include public intoxication, disorderly conduct and some assaults. Class B misdemeanors and above are processed through the county jail. For the most part, officials said, the temporary hold on arrests was expected to impact only minor traffic warrants.

Mayoral spokesman Patrick Trahan said people in jail would be able to make bail, but several bondsmen contacted by the Houston Chronicle were under the impression that no one could be released until Tuesday.

Appearances postponed

A courts employee greeted people in front of the payment windows at the municipal court building at 1400 Lubbock. She turned many people away for their 4 p.m. court appearances. Some were frustrated by the inconvenience, and others were happy to put it off.

The municipal court’s assistant director, Bonita Tolbert, said the only operations being rescheduled were court appearances for 3,000 people Friday. Many who walked into the municipal court Friday afternoon were turned away for other reasons.

Christian Navarrette, an art teacher, left his job early to get down to the courthouse to pay a speeding ticket. He said he was turned away when he tried to pay the ticket, which is due by Monday.

“They told me if I pay it now, it may not post by Monday because of the computer problem,” he said. “They told that I could face more fines if I pay it today, or I can just come back to pay it Monday. I guess I’ll have to leave work early Monday, too.”

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